What Getting Swept By the Worst Team in Baseball Does to Your Playoff Odds and Other Bullets

Jul 27, 2015

Busy, busy day on tap, and a busy, busy week. Candidly, I just hope the Cubs win a couple games early this week to help folks have a little better attitude (including my own). It’s easier to get excited about long days of rumor-mongering and transaction-following when the Cubs are playing well. Or even just not playing abysmal.

Hopefully they can take some from the Rockies, starting today.

Speaking of the abysmal. Here’s the thing about that Phillies series: I could totally sit here and explain to you all of the reasons that we shouldn’t take too much away from it. The Cubs nearly won on Friday, and it took two bullpen blips to lose. The Cubs lost on Saturday because one of the best pitchers in baseball no-hit them. What are you gonna do? And then yesterday, the Cubs actually scored some runs, but the pitching and defense weren’t there. That happens. See? I can explain it away as just one of those things that happens in the course of a very long season.

However, I wouldn’t be doing you a full and complete service if I didn’t discuss the flip-side: sure, it’s a thing that can happen, but it was a really, really bad thing to happen. Losing three in a row when you’re in the heat of a playoff race is bad enough, but when you lose those three to an extremely beatable opponent at home? When we talk about playoff odds and projections, those are the kinds of games that go into those projections as wins (or at least 66.67% wins). So losing them hurts. A lot. Consider that the Cubs entered into the weekend series with a 65% shot at the the playoffs, according to FanGraphs. That was already down from 75% in early July (the Cubs’ high for the year), as the Cubs were lumbering through a rough patch heading into the Phillies series. Now? Having lost those three games? The Cubs’ playoff odds at FanGraphs are down to 42.7%. At BP, they’re down to 43.1%. That series against the Phillies, when put into context, was even more awful than you may have thought. The series provided more information – bad information – and took projected wins and converted them to actual losses.

(It didn’t help that the Giants took care of business, sweeping away the A’s.)

None of this is designed to embolden the irrationally negative among you. The Cubs do still have a solid chance at the playoffs (by the projections or just by your own dispassionate analysis of the teams). But no one – including the front office as it considers the week ahead – should sleep on just how seriously damaging that series was. Sorry, my friends. It was really, really bad.

Of his ugly start yesterday – which he called “garbage” – Jason Hammel said that he didn’t stick to the game plan and left too many balls up in the zone (CSN). The latter was visible to the observer, and frankly, you hope it was just a random garbage performance where the location was off. The alternative explanation – that Hammel is still feeling the effects of his hamstring injury and it’s making him a dramatically worse pitcher – is terrifying. His velocity, for what it’s worth, has been slightly down these last two starts.

Joe Maddon knows how much people want to see Kyle Schwarber in there more regularly (he did get an inning in left field yesterday in the blowout), but he reminds folks to consider the possibility that Schwarber is playing so well in part because of how he’s being utilized (CSN). Today lines up as a “Schwarber day” with Kyle Hendricks on the mound, though the Cubs are facing a lefty in Jorge De La Rosa. I actually wouldn’t hate seeing David Ross out there to start today. I know, I know. I’m awful.

Ross talks about the pick-me-up he provided the team in the 9th inning yesterday.

The Cubs have a TBA in their rotation tomorrow, but it looks like it will probably be Dallas Beeler filling in again, hopefully more successfully than last week in Cincinnati. And, I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’:

Prob meaningless, but just sayin': currently scheduled to start on Tuesday around the league – Price, Leake, Shields, Iwakuma, Samardzija.

— Brett Taylor (@BleacherNation) July 27, 2015

Sahadev Sharma writes about a particularly vexing part of the recent offensive troubles: Dexter Fowler and Addison Russell are getting on base, which was the whole point of the pitcher batting 8th plan … but the middle bats aren’t actually driving them in.

If you missed anything from a very busy weekend, catch up here. Luke’s got your minor league catch-up here.

I also got into a Cubs/Rays reliever rumor earlier today.

written by

Brett Taylor

Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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